DDEInitiate Function

You can use the DDEInitiate function to begin a dynamic data exchange (DDE) conversation with another application. The DDEInitiate function opens a DDE channel for transfer of data between a DDE server and client application.

For example, if you wish to transfer data from a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet to a Microsoft Office Access 2007 database, you can use the DDEInitiate function to open a channel between the two applications. In this example, Access acts as the client application and Excel acts as the server application.

Syntax

DDEInitiate ( application, topic )

The DDEInitiate function syntax has these arguments:

Argument	Description
application	A string expression identifying an application that can participate in a DDE conversation. Usually, the application argument is the name of an .exe file (without the .exe extension) for a Microsoft Windows–based application, such as Excel.
topic	A string expression that is the name of a topic recognized by the application argument. Check the application's documentation for a list of topics.

Remarks

If successful, the DDEInitiate function begins a DDE conversation with the application and topic specified by the application and topic arguments, and then returns a Long integer value. This return value represents a unique channel number identifying a channel through which data transfer can take place. This channel number is subsequently used with other DDE functions and statements.

If the application isn't already running or if it's running but doesn't recognize the topic argument or doesn't support DDE, the DDEInitiate function returns a run-time error.

The value of the topic argument depends on the application specified by the application argument. For applications that use documents or data files, valid topic names often include the names of those files.

Note: The maximum number of channels that can be open simultaneously is determined by Microsoft Windows and your computer's memory and resources. If you aren't using a channel, you should conserve resources by terminating it with a DDETerminate or DDETerminateAll statement.

tip

If you need to manipulate another application's objects from Access, you may want to consider using automation.